IT needs to be better aligned with business to offer real benefits

Twenty percent of IT professionals claim that the consumerisation of IT has had the most negative impact on their role, according to a survey by cloud service provider, Star. Other findings were that a third of IT professionals believe that the biggest challenge in their job is user demand for for innovation while a quarter said that poor alignment between IT and business was the biggest challenge.

When asked about the technologies which had a positive impact on their jobs, virtualisation and cloud computing were cited as the top two. But 26 percent said that the inertia of their colleagues was a barrier to cloud adoption and 25 percent said that there was no strategy for change in their organisation.

The survey also found a heavy bias towards technical capability rather than strategic business expertise. When asked about the most important skills needed by IT professionals, 23 percent said strategy and 19 percent said analysis, while 77 percent said they held a technology related degree instead of a business or management qualification.

Paul Watson, interim CEO of Star, said “The survey suggests we are at an inflexion point and this is where the leadership of a company must guide the IT department more effectively, to operate in new and beneficial ways that will serve the business, rather than focus on the acquisition of ever greater technical skills that have limited benefit in the context of the wider business strategy.”